We Are the Luckiest by Laura Mckowen

Author:Laura Mckowen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781608686551
Publisher: New World Library
Published: 2019-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

Nothing Trumps the Process

Pregnancy lasts for nine months, give or take. It’s never not been this way because someone wanted it to go faster, or slower (can you imagine?). We cannot change the process simply by having opinions about it or magical-thinking our way to sometime in the future when it’s different, better, easier. A human life forms in the same miraculous way, no matter what we think about it. It doesn’t matter how intelligent we are, how much experience we have, how much money we make, or how special we may think our circumstances are. We can do things to support or hurt the process, but we can’t influence the process itself.

Pregnancy is both an act of choice and an act of allowing. An act of power and an act of surrender. Sobriety is not different.

As I said, the first half of my pregnancy was brutal. I thought it would never end. I didn’t feel pregnant; I just felt sick. And subsequently resentful. I did everything to fight it and fix it, but nothing made the nausea move. Eventually, I learned to live with it, and right about the time that happened, it left.

Toward the end of my pregnancy, an ultrasound revealed that Alma was in a breech position. Frank breech, to be exact, which means that her butt (as opposed to her head, in a “normal” position) was facing the birth canal, and her knees were not bent with her feet pointing down but rather her legs were straight so that she was in a full pike position, with her feet up by her face.

This isn’t a big deal; it’s pretty common, and usually the baby turns on its own. Only 4 percent of babies are actually delivered breech.

I really wanted to have a natural birth, without drugs (this is funny, in hindsight), the old-fashioned way — through my hoo-ha — and, naively, I never considered it might not happen this way. But my doctor told us matter-of-factly that if the baby remained breech, she would have to do a C-section. It would be too risky otherwise. I pretended I wanted a natural birth because I was very worried about the potential damage of epidurals and such, but really, I just wanted to prove to myself and everyone else that I was really fucking tough and could handle a lot of pain. (I know.)

We tried everything to get her to turn. Acupuncture. Lighting incense at my feet. Yoga. Hypnosis. Talking to her. I even had a doctor perform a version — a painful procedure where they try to manually turn the baby. Nothing worked. Alma had no interest in moving.

In the end, having a C-section turned out to be just fine and didn’t make me any less of a warrior or any less Alma’s mother. I rarely think about how she was born.

Early sobriety wasn’t all that different from pregnancy. I thought it should be . . . easier. Faster. Better. I never felt the elusive pink cloud people in recovery spoke of, just like I never felt the mysterious pregnancy glow.

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